Small things 30 Jun

• We have ice (water) hockey, table (air) hockey, and field (earth) hockey. Is it time for fire hockey?
• The US Supreme Court upheld a person’s right to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people on religious grounds. Is there a religion I can join that is morally against people behaving like assholes?
• A Calgary bylaw change would impose a $500 fine on private property owners who fail to trim foxtail barley, a native grass with spiky seeds that can be harmful to pets. But not public property. They have no obligation whatsoever.
• If I opened a sandwich shop, I’d name it ‘Sandwich shops near me’.
• The most dangerous kind of canoes are volcanoes. Also, try pronouncing volcanoes the same again…
  
  
  
• Pogo. Corndog. Sausage twinkie. Pluto pup. Dippy dog. You decide.
• Modern adulting: You have bags under your eyes. You have a box of compostable bags. You have a bag full of grocery bags. You have a gift bag full of gift bags. You have assorted reusable bags in the car. You walk into the grocery store having forgotten to bring any bags. So you buy more bags.
• Isn’t it weird that you never hear concerns about how the McDonald’s CEO making $18 million per year might drive up the price of a Big Mac? But when you suggest that we should pay the workers $20 an hour? Holy crap! Big Macs could cost fifteen dollars dude!
• You win some, you dim sum.

Pillow drool

 

Little moving splat

Ze Frank gives us an introduction to the smart little critter known as slime mold.

Why couldn’t Ze have been my science teacher in school? 

That would have been 100 times more interesting. 

And funny.

Some will get it

 

Things I learned lately 30 Jun

• The state of California were a sovereign nation, it would have the 5th largest economy. It is about to vault over Germany to become the 4th largest economy in the world.
• The Wallace Line is an invisible boundary line drawn in 1859 by Alfred Russel Wallace that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and Australia. West of the line are found organisms related to Asiatic species; to the east, a very different mixture of species of Asian and Australian origins is present. Wallace noticed this clear division in both land mammals and birds during his travels through the East Indies in the 19th century.
• UK: Full fat milk. US: Whole milk. Canada: Homo milk.
• Around the 44 second mark of the classic Floyd song Wish you were here, you can hear David Gilmour cough. Hearing the flub in the mix, they decided to keep it in. But David, on hearing the cough, supposedly resolved to quit smoking. 
• Flavours of potato chips in France: camembert; oyster; onion confit; aioli; andalouse sauce; porcini; tapenade; braised chicken; gouda and cumin; prime rib; mustard and vinegar; emmental; goat cheese and herb; parisian sandwich; basque pepper; roast beef and mustard; caramelized roscoff onion; old-fashioned mustard; bolognese; cheeseburger; smoked paprika; pesto mozzarella; mustard pickles; country ham.
• It’s not unusual to find various bottles of wine in the grocery store in France under 6 euros.
• The Dr Seuss book “If I ran the zoo” contains the first appearance of the word “nerd”. This fact turned the word from a nonce into a neologism.
• Coca Cola sells $3.1 billion of product in Canada.

Small things 23 Jun

• Sarcastic news: A new Canadian law would force social media and search platforms to pay for the 3rd party news stories they display. But these platforms are so close to the brink of financial collapse, they have instead elected to just not carry any Canadian news stories. Meta and Google live to fight another day.
• Have they just given up on inventing new pasta shapes? Can I not look forward to some rhombus pasta someday?
• If I owned a furniture store, I might call it ‘Shack of Sit’.
• The biggest pot in your cupboard. Or as I like to call it, the leftover generator.
• Spiders must be really confused watching soccer. The ball gets kicked into the net, but nobody eats the ball.
• My friend suggested that I’ll regret not buying the highest performance computer I can. OK, so is the Amazon data centre for sale at a good price?
• Have you ever waited so long to decide where to order food from that once you finally called they had closed?
• It’s 1989. Spotify and iTunes don’t exist yet. You just spent $20 on an album and suddenly realize it has one good song on it. Dang it!
• When you have a driving distraction so bad that once it’s over you restart the song that was streaming over again from the beginning.
• Funny drug dealer: “We don’t have Coke, is Pepsi OK?”
• Superheroes saying “The city is saved” after it’s almost completely destroyed.
• Hey kids! Slingshots! You’re welcome.
• If other things had been named like the walkie-talkie: Stabby-grabby (fork); Soupy-scoopy (spoon); Roomy-vroomies (limousine); hearty-starty (defibrillator); starey squareys (computer monitors); Eaty heaty (microwave oven); righty tighty (screwdriver).
• I got a wallet sized birth certificate. It’s for the benefit of people who think I was born yesterday.

30 people getting coffee versus 30 people enjoying coffee

 

The ‘other’ North American hockey league

The World Hockey Association (WHA), formed in 1971, tried to capitalize on the lack of hockey teams in a number of major American cities and mid-level Canadian cities, and also hoped to attract the best players by paying more than NHL owners would. Of the original 12 WHA franchises, only the Winnipeg Jets remained for all seven seasons without relocating, changing team names, or folding.

The whole dramatic story can be read here. 

Wizard of Oz pitch meeting

 

When bluffs collapse

I was mesmerized by what happened in this video at Black Beach Bluffs near La Jolla.

Pay particular attention to the black stuff that oozes out of the bottom of the bluff around the 3 minute mark.

The redundant plaque plaque

 

Things I learned lately 23 Jun

• The NHL has decided to ban ‘cause-based’ jerseys from now on, because of the few players who refused to wear ‘Pride’ jerseys this past season. They could have just said, “If you don’t want to wear it, then don’t.”
• Do OLED TVs suffer from burn in? Yes, they can. Do you need to worry? Only if you’re displaying static elements on screen for hours at a time on a regular basis. I’m talking about the score windows of video games, the ticker and logo of CNN, that sort of thing.
• Men may be more likely to lie to enhance their status or impress others, while women may be more likely to lie to protect others or avoid conflict.
• In the United States, renewable energy sources, including hydropower, wind, solar, and other sources, generated approximately 12.3% of the country's electricity in 2020. In China, 26.8% came from renewable energy sources in 2020.
• Canada may be unique in calling it a bus ‘depot’ and a fire ‘hall’.
• St. John's was used for setting up seasonal fishermen camps in the early 1500s. Sebastian Cabot declared in his original 1545 map that St. John's earned its name when he and his father, John Cabot, in the service of England, supposedly became the first Europeans to sail into the harbour, on the morning of 24 June 1494, the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. A series of expeditions to St. John's by the Portuguese took place in the early 16th century, and by 1540, French, Spanish and Portuguese ships crossed the Atlantic annually to fish the waters off the Avalon Peninsula. On 5 August 1583, an English Sea Dog, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, claimed the area as England's first overseas colony. There was no permanent population, however, and Gilbert was lost at sea during his return voyage, thereby ending any immediate plans for settlement. By 1620, the fishermen of England's West Country controlled most of Newfoundland's east coast. In 1627, William Payne, called St. John's "the principal prime and chief lot in all the whole country". Sometime after 1630, the town of St. John's was established as a permanent community.

Paris door

 

Small things 17 Jun

• I was hoping our premier would stand up to Dynalife the same way she’s standing up to Ottawa. I guess it’s hard to punish the people your party personally hired. I wonder if there are any financial links between Dynalife and anyone now or formerly in the UCP?
• "The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence." ~Nikola Tesla
• The FBI are so dumb. They kept warning me not to pirate DVDs and all they accomplished was getting me to stop buying DVDs with FBI warnings at the beginning.
• I looked in the Bible pretty thoroughly, and I couldn’t find anything that said ‘thou shalt not accidentally forget to scan that case of pop at the self check-out'.
• My sleeping pattern is rotisserie chicken. I just keep turnin’ and turnin’... By morning I’m rested on all sides.
• Vampires must get really tired of seeing human history keep repeating itself.
• I think it should be common courtesy that if you want to show someone something on your phone, you should cue it up before mentioning that you want to show it to them. Rather than saying, “Oh I have something great to show you,” and then you’re forced to wait 5 minutes while they try to find it.
• When your spouse leaves a note in the morning at your computer that says: “This is just not working.” But you turn it on and it seems to be working just fine.
• Yeah, but what’s the soup of the night tho?
• Dove chocolate tastes way better than their soap.
• I’ve got the kind of silly goose vibe that the serious geese don’t appreciate.
• Yes, we’re all cut from the same cloth, but some of us were cut with those wavy scissors.

Divider

 

3rd places should abound

Thought provoking video from one of the great minds of our time, the guy who operates the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel.

It’s about how great it is to have a neighbourhood with a ‘third place’, a place that isn’t work or home where you can hang out and meet people. More importantly, how suburbia zoning is making places like this extinct. My own neighbourhood is slowly introducing third places, but it’s only possible because we have a ‘main street’ and the neighbourhood is small. We also have a place called Angel’s Cafe on the walkway beside the Bow River, but this place is an anomaly, and would never get a green light if it were trying to get built from scratch today.

Peacock humour

 

A challenge worthy of accepting

You could say that it took some growing up before I began to feel this way and try my best to follow through on the concept myself. But when you step back and think about it, everyone has their own issues to deal with, their own burdens to carry, their own struggles to overcome. You can never fully know what another person is feeling and why, so it may be easy to assume, judge, label, insult, name-call, and disrespect someone you don’t agree with or that has differing beliefs or values to yourself. But is it fair to do so? No. Just as you wouldn’t want others to do the same to you, when they have no idea what you’re living through, what you've experienced.

This extends to politics as well. It is perfectly fine to disagree with another person’s politics. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. There is no need for assumptions, judgement, labelling, insults, name-calling, and disrespect. They’re just people. They have families. They’re just trying to live life the best way they know how. I think we have some choices to consider, in ascending order of practicality:

• Keep your opinion to yourself.
• If asked, voice your opinion, but in a respectful way.
• Listen to the other person’s point of view and try to understand their position and why they feel that way.
• Consider that you might be missing vital facts, misinformed, misguided, or dare I say just wrong, and challenge your own views from time to time.
• Learn to compromise.

Canadian elevations (in feet)

 

Things I learned lately 17 Jun

• In Canadian law, store employees are not allowed to physically stop you from leaving or search your belongings unless they actually witness you commit an offence. You are free to walk past a receipt check, out the store. The exception is a retailer such as Costco, which can enforce receipt checks because people (probably unknowingly) agree to them when they sign up for the required store membership.
• Instant Brands, the company behind Instant Pot, has filed for bankruptcy. 
• Canada has around 106 water bomber planes that are considered airworthy and able to fly.
• Calgary has more millionaires per capita than any other Canadian city.
• One of the reasons AI art generating tools don’t draw hands very well is that they don’t have a lot of examples of pictures of hands to train from, unlike faces, for which there are a lot.
• Steamboats, once a common mode of river transport, were quite dangerous. Between 1816 and 1848, boiler explosions alone killed more than 1,800 passengers and crew and injured another 1,000. The sinking of the steamboat Sultana in 1865, also the result of a boiler explosion, claimed as many as 1,800 lives, still the worst maritime disaster in US history.
• Parrots normally live in flocks, so maybe video calls might help them feel less lonely. That was the subject of an experiment at the University of Glasgow. The researchers studied 18 pet parrots who were taught to use a tablet. They learned really quickly. The parrots would ring a bell when they wanted to make a call, and then select a bird to call. The birds made 147 calls during the study, and engaged in social behaviors while on calls. The birds that made the most calls ended up being the most popular, and were chosen by other birds more often! The action starts at 3:27  
• There is a list of fictional brand names used in movies, TV and games. You can find it here. 

Small things 9 Jun

• In some restaurants in the US, they bring the wireless pay terminal, let you tap your card, then they print out a paper bill for you to write out your tip and total and then sign your name. They do not have the ability to add the tip on the terminal for some reason. It’s like a Flintstone car, no engine, just foot power.
• "Experts" tell you not to look at screens before bed because it messes up your circadian rhythm, but they're just lying so that they can enjoy unfettered high speed internet connections at bedtime. They want the night internet all to themselves.
• I was in San Diego recently and walking the oceanside pathway, I noticed a kid had collected seashells and had them arranged for sale. A couple beat cops walked past and this kid called them over asking if they’d like to buy some shells for a dollar each. That kid is going places.
• At least during the 1918 pandemic they had cocaine in their soda.
• Remember when you used to have to ‘buy’ Microsoft Windows?
• Jobs and cars. Your job pays for your car, which you need to get to work. In some cases the car is your job. Shout out to Uber and Uber-like drivers, cabbies etc.
• Cat horror stories: “And then, she got out the spray bottle…”
• Cat poetry: A gift for you, will soon arrive. But keep in mind, it is still alive.
• I find it odd that even though both Canada and the United States are filled with the descendants of people who sought out a new life in a land of promise, many of these same descendants don’t want any more people seeking out a new life in their land of promise.

"Where going?"

 

What can you do with ChatGPT

Many of you will have heard about the AI tool ChatGPT by now. But like any other powerful tool, it’s hard sometimes to figure out what you can use it for that can help you. Here are some ideas:

Simplify complex topics. If you're ever confused about a complex topic, ask ChatGPT:

"Explain [complex topic] like I'm 5 years old."

Summarize articles. Online articles can be a pain to read. You have to get past paywalls, filler, ads, etc. ChatGPT will summarize main points from any article URL you feed it.

First drafts / inspiration. Don’t let ChatGPT write content for you verbatim, but there’s nothing ethically wrong with getting it to churn out some content to inspire you.

Tell it to write [type of content], for example, “Write a long-form article about the techno scene in Berlin Germany.”

Edit your writing. ChatGPT can be a great writing assistant. If you're unhappy with some of your writing, copy & paste it into ChatGPT, then tell it to proofread spelling & grammar, or recommend changes, or edit in a specific style. “Make the above essay longer with a more casual writing style.”

Generate headlines. Ask ChatGPT to generate various headlines on a certain topic. Take your pick and make it your own.

Summarize books. ChatGPT can distill major ideas from a book. “Summarize the wealthy barber by david chilton.”

(Many of these prompts also work in Bing AI Chat)

Shown as a Bing AI generated poem about sunsets...

California island?

In 1626, People thought California was an island and they had no knowledge of the west side of North America.

Shows / Movies I could not finish

Here is a list of movies or TV shows I could not continue with to the end:

• The Munsters (2022)
• Last One Laughing Canada
• The Hustle
• Three Pines

Ketchup though?

You had me at maple bacon.

 

Lost between two shores

Nick Fradiani plays Neil Diamond in the Broadway play A Beautiful Noise.

Here he is performing ‘I am I said’ in the studio. 

What a voice!

In San Diego, new Lays chip flavours

 

Things I learned lately 9 Jun

• As of late Wednesday, there were over 400 wildfires burning in Canada.
• 1,000 Lego-nauts were sent to the edge of space (34 kilometres) on high altitude balloons so they could be declared as having been ‘in space’. They’re going to be given away as prizes by Lego.
• Alberta has two area codes spanning the entire province. 587 and 825. I came across my first 825 number recently.
• Being a homeless person in Japan is very stigmatized. There is no culture of compassion for the homeless there. They are looked upon as only having themselves to blame, because they’re mostly men, and men are expected to be self-reliant, and deserve no help. Being homeless is considered an embarrassment. Nevertheless, there are many working poor in Japan who find a way to get by, spending the night in 24 hour internet cafes while working low paying jobs.
• You may have noticed that some car models have what look like they could or should be turn signal lights on the back, but they don’t work. The signals and sometimes even the brake lights have been moved to a different light position. Sometimes the model even has to have extra lights installed to act as turn and brake lights. Why? Because North American law says you can’t have a brake light or turn signal light on a movable panel, such as a hatch or trunk.
• French microbiologist Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization in the 1860s to deactivate unwanted microorganisms in wine.
• Nevada has been the top gold-producing state in the US since 1986.
• There’s an annual seagull imitation contest held in Belgium.